Workplace Surveillance

Executive Summary

Workplace surveillance and company monitoring of employees are expanding and evolving, aided by technological innovations and enabled by privacy laws that have not kept pace with those developments. A recent survey estimates 98 percent of U.S. and U.K. workplaces have some form of digital surveillance, such as tracking employees through sociometric badges or biometric scanners, scanning emails and social media posts, monitoring computer keystrokes, surveilling with a video camera or monitoring movement through GPS on phones. Businesses use these technologies to improve performance, efficiency and security. But they run a risk that employees will resent what they perceive to be Big Brother-style intrusiveness, and companies also must stay in compliance with a confusing mix of state and federal laws on surveillance.

Among the key takeaways:

New “people analytics” technology uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to crunch monitoring data and put it to use; about 70 percent of companies worldwide are putting this into place.

Experts say keeping employees informed about the reasons for monitoring is a better approach than secrecy, because it earns trust and buy-in and avoids low morale, loss of productivity and negative publicity.

U.S. law has not kept up with technological change, but U.S. companies with employees in Europe are subject to restrictive new digital privacy laws enacted there.

Articles

Dai, Hengchen, et al., “The Impact of Time at Work and Time Off From Work on Rule Compliance: The Case of Hand Hygiene in Health Care,” Journal of Applied Psychology, May 2015, https://tinyurl.com/y8hdtxj5. Business researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and University of North Carolina studied whether monitoring health care workers’ handwashing practices had beneficial results – and what happened when monitoring was ended.

Fusi, Federica, and Mary K. Feeney, “Electronic monitoring in public organizations: evidence from US local governments,” Public Management Review, Nov. 10, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/yb7mwmp4. Arizona State University researchers reviewed the state of electronic monitoring in small- and medium-sized municipalities.

Reports and Studies

“State Social Media Privacy Laws,” National Conference of State Legislatures, Jan 2, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/jv9ha2f. A bipartisan organization examines and lists the states with laws regulating whether employers can require employees or applicants to submit social media usernames and passwords.

“Your Employer May Be Watching Your Every Move: Employees Find Workplace Monitoring Objectionable, Says New Survey,” PRNewswire, June 7, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ybmds359. A survey of 250 global human resources professionals found that most employees are concerned about data privacy but accept some type of monitoring as long as it is work-related.

Ella, V. John, “Employee Monitoring and Workplace Privacy Law,” American Bar Association National Symposium on Technology in Labor and Employment Law, April 2016, https://tinyurl.com/yadlskov. The American Bar Association gives an overview of current law and recent cases covering different aspects of workplace surveillance/monitoring and worker privacy.

The Next Step

Devices

Campbell, Dakin, “HSBC is making a $130 million investment in its bank branches and the latest step is to arm its bankers with Samsung watches,” Business Insider, Oct. 22, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y7xsk5p6. To improve communication, the bank’s branch managers will use Samsung watches to send and receive messages and speak to colleagues using a microphone.

Ma, Alexandra, “Thousands of people in Sweden are embedding microchips under their skin to replace ID cards,” Business Insider, May 14, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ybch9sty. About 3,000 people in Sweden have accepted implanted microchips, which eliminate the need for office key cards and IDs. The chips even take the place of train tickets.

Legal Action

Cimpanu, Catalin, “Wendy’s faces lawsuit for unlawfully collecting employee fingerprints,” ZDNet, Sept. 23, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y9mfqdly. A class-action lawsuit filed by former employees of the fast-food company alleges that Wendy’s does not disclose what it does with employee fingerprints collected by biometric scanners.

Hong, Nicole, “At Stake in Lawsuit: What Can Bosses Access on Your Personal Devices?” The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 9, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yak2n36r. A lawsuit alleges that a company accessed a former employee’s home computer to read his email and steal data. Legal experts say the case raises questions about the boundaries between work and personal devices.

National Workrights Institute128 Stone Cliff Road, Princeton, NJ 08540 1-609-683-0313 www.workrights.orginfo@workrights.org @usworkrights Founded in 2000 by former staff of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Taskforce on Civil Liberties in the Workplace, this advocacy organization provides legal databases and information about workplace privacy and human rights issues.

Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)1800 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314 1-800-283-SHRM (7476) www.shrm.org@SHRM The world’s largest HR professional organization, with 300,000 members in 165 countries; it has a large database of articles about workplace surveillance and monitoring.